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Is the way the Bible is used beneficial to the community of humanity?

For many believers, using the Bible as the guide to living a spiritual life, the definitive, and final answer for everything is believed that is how God intended Bible to be used. But is that the case.I know the Bible is all divided up into nice chapters and verses that are conveniently weaponized and used as proof text ammunition to validate man-made doctrine?The fact is, the chopping up of scripture didn’t start until long after the post cross books were written.Is the way the bible is used God's design? What if God didn’t intend for it to be the unquestionable 'Word of God'? What if God isn’t behind the way verses of the Bible are ripped up to prooftext everything? What if God doesn’t approve of our blind devotion to, and the idolization of a book?I know that sounds repulsive to the traditional way of thinking, but biblically could that be the case?What about in the gospels where we hear Jesus declaring, “You have heard it said… but I say…” Sometimes he’s just talking about tradition or the teachings of other religious leaders. But a lot of times, he’s talking about the scripture we call the Old Testament. Is he breaking the bonds of scripture to bring new truth and spiritual life into his people?The freedom he is declaring doesn’t even stop there. According to the book of Acts, Peter was at a house in the town of Joppa when he decided to go up to the roof and pray while lunch was being prepared. Not long after he had began praying, he fell into a trance and had one of those famous biblical visions from God. In the vision, he saw a sheet fall from heaven full of all sorts of creatures..."four-footed creatures and reptiles and birds of the air”...and he heard a voice saying, “Take and eat.” Peter said “no” because scripture forbade him from doing so. The voice told him again to take and eat and once more Peter refused. This happened three times and three times Peter said no, citing scripture.To the scripture believers of his day it was an odd vision that only becomes odder when you step back and realize what’s really going on.God was speaking and God was telling Peter to violate scripture. Wow...we know now Regular, you are a heretical!What we see here in Peter’s vision, and throughout the New Testament is a fundamental and radical shift from the old way of doing things (no more sacrifices, from how God related to God’s people (no more need for a high priest), from scripture itself (no longer bound by the Law).It is a seismic shift to something radically different than the way it was done before.So why was God doing something so radical and so obviously contradictory to scripture and tradition?Because in Jesus God was doing a brand new thing through his community of the redeemed, a Spirit thing that couldn’t be bound by scripture that would break people free from the being shackled to the past.Today most people still use the Bible the same way Peter did...as a book to be blindly followed, and an idol that even God is answerable to. Then the religionist would post Facebook postings about heretics in the church trying to deceive the faithful, then load their mouth firing tonguesFull of Bible verses to “prove” they are right, follow that with a thorough trashing of their opponent’s knowledge of the Bible, and finally wrap things up by denouncing them as a heretic.Not realizing that when all self-righteous work was done, just like Peter, we would have successfully quashed the move of the Spirit.The Bible is meant to give us direction to Christ and love people has he loved them, but instead we’ve turned it into a jailer that shackles us to ideology, dogma, doctrine, denominationalism and legalism.Instead of letting the Bible lead us to Jesus the Truth, we use it as a weapon to attack people who believe differently than we do and defend our ideological idols.If Peter had continued to use scripture the way we do today, instead of getting out of the way for God to move, the power of the Spirit would have been stifled and the redeemed community would not have gotten off the ground. If Paul had used scripture the way we do today, he could have never taken the gospel to the ends of the earth and ministered to the Gentiles because they were outside of Israel’s covenant as described in scripture. I wonder...is that the reason that in over 2000 years of gospel preaching the majority of people still do not know the gospel?Believing God's Grace message doesn’t negate the importance of scripture. It simply puts it in proper perspective and allows gives it its proper function...a pointer to Christ, not an idol to be worshipped or a weapon to be wielded to prove stupid man-made beliefs.If we fail to understand how the Bible is used...or misused and abused...is not ordained of God, we will get left behind because we’re so busy quoting Bible verses and holding God hostage to scripture we won't be able to understand the work of his Grace unfolding in the community of the redeemed to benefit the community of humanity.

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“Not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together" (Hebrews 10:25), is a common verse cited by Christians who believe that if you're not attending weekly meetings or plugged in a church denomination that you are somehow out of sync with Scripture and, for all practical purposes, "backsliding". Some refer to the out of church crowd as rebels, or the walking wounded and this verse is often given as the prescription. But is "attending church" really what the author of Hebrews had in mind here?

YES THE BIBLE SAY’S NOT TO FORSAKE THE ASSEMBLING TOGETHER? NOTICE IT DOES NOT SAY DO NOT FORSAKE THE "ASSEMBLY" OR CHURCH BUILDING.

First of all, it is essential that we understand the meaning of the word "church" as it is used in the Bible. These comments, while being historically and biblically sound, are not meant to suggest that Christians should not meet together, share fellowship, pray or preach the Word of God. If that is the conclusion you…

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The trial of Pastor Jones

Judge: Mr. Jones you have been charged with multiple counts of
extortion. Your crime spree covers 20 years and thousands of victims.
You have defrauded people out of their money with fear and manipulation,
telling them they had to tithe 10% of their income to your church and
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Mr. Jones: I
plead not guilty your Honor, I have done nothing wrong. I have only
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in Genesis chapter 13 verse 2 the Bible says Abraham was rich with
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From talking to people who stated that God in the bible is referred to as a male and for this reason they refused to read "The Shack" or view the movie because it portrayed God as a aunt Jemima black woman.

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I am who I am and I cannot be no other. I refuse to be molded to a mold that others think I should conform to, for then I would not be me. You may not like what you see, and sometimes neither do I, but what you see is what you get. But don't fret, God is not finished with me yet. Therefore I am not perfect and neither do I claim to be, God is still working on me therefore, if I have done anything to offend thee, please forgive me. One day I hope to be what I was created to be, but until then I am just me.